


Friends

by thecat_13145



Series: The Stark Pattern [3]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecat_13145/pseuds/thecat_13145
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contarty to popular belief, Howard Stark’s first thoughts on being introduced to Agent Carter were not how best to get her into bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends

Contrary to popular belief among those involved in the project, Howard Stark’s first thoughts on being introduced to Agent Carter were not how best to get her into bed.

It was how much his mother would dislike her.

Agent Carter wore her hair short, had on the bare minimum of makeup, her skirt was less than an inch below her knees and she wore silk stockings. Her brown eyes stared around the room, challenging anyone to make comment about her sex. She wore her uniform like armour, rather than like clothes, with a tie knotted in a half Windsor knot around her neck.

She was, in short, almost everything Elizabeth Stark disliked about modern girls.

“Abandoning their femininity, trying to compete with men.” She would say, fiddling with the brooch at her own neck, and trying to ignore the way her husband looked at those girls.

So yes, his mother would dislike Agent Carter intensely. Not as much as she disliked Maria Carbonell, who he had asked to marry him in a mad impulse after agreeing to Colonel Philips offer and who had turned him down, saying she wasn’t sure either of them were ready for that yet, but it would probably be a close run thing.

He also knew he could flirt with her as much as he liked, he wasn’t going to get anywhere. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

She would be offended if he didn’t.

“Howard Stark,” He said, holding out his hand and smiling his best grin. “And you would be?”

/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

“Be honest,”

“Never,” Peggy aimed a cuff at his hand, fighting not to laugh.

“Do you think the professor’s project can succeed?”

Howard shrugged. “If it doesn’t, it won’t be for lack of trying.” He said. They sat in the lab, gazing at the huge coffin like object that stood in the centre of the room. Where tomorrow, they would either make history, or destroy a young man’s life.

Neither of them wanted to drink, that would be for tomorrow, if they were successful, so Stark sat with a cup of coffee balanced on the floor and Peggy held a cup with tea in it in her lap.

“Beyond that, didn’t you say it had worked, that you’d seen it in Germany?”

“It was different then.”

“Why?”

Peggy shrugged, looking into her tea cup. “The subject was different.”

They were silent, both thinking of the skinny, scrawny test subject probably lying in his bunk, sleeping like a log at the camp. The young man who looked like a breath of wind could blow him over, who had been rejected by the army 6 different times, who was tubercular, asthmatic, had a bad heart and about a thousand other things that made him a complete and utter disaster as a test subject.

Yet Erskine had defended and fought for this man, and ultimately succeeded in convincing everyone, even Howard that this mad idea could work with Steve Rogers.

He sighed, reaching out to touch her hand. “If the professor is right, and the serum brings out what ever’s inside of the subject, then it can’t fail.”

It couldn’t either. Stark had watched the test subjects, as had Peggy. The others had done everything to try and force Rogers to quit, but somehow the other man had not only survived, but triumphed. He seemed to honestly believe in the absolute rightness of the cause he was going to be fighting for, something Stark wasn’t entirely sure the Generals did.

If Erskine’s serum could turn those into a physical expression, then the result was going to be something to see.

“And if he’s wrong?” Peggy looked at him desperately, seeking his reassurance. There was nothing between them, but friendship, something that was still a bit of a novel idea for Howard. He’d never had a dame, especially a good looking one, who was just a friend, but somehow that was how it was with Peggy.

It didn’t mean he didn’t flirt with her, or occasionally she with him, but it was just a game. A challenge to get her to react. He didn’t expect anything to come of it, and neither did she.

He squeezed her hand. “Then at least the kid gets to do what he wanted to. Die in the service of his country.”

*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

The jeep looked like it should have been rusting in a junk yard, not banging and rattling its way down an English road, but with every serviceable vehicle needed overseas, this was all that Dugan had been able to get his hands on.

The second time it broke down on the 10 mile trip, Howard had emerged from under the hood, his hands stained red and smelling of gasoline.

“Where you get this gas?” He’d asked Dugan, who had looked uncomfortable and muttered something about “emergency rations”. Stark had been in England long enough to know it was no such thing.

He decided to just be grateful it hadn’t been contaminated with sawdust or something.

He jumped out of the car as soon as they arrived, and pushed his way into the hall.

Peggy Carter was standing by one of the tables, dressed in a red silk dress and high heels, with silk stockings rather than the gravy painted legs of the other girls over here. Her face was pale, making the makeup she was wearing stand out like a mask. She stood her back poker straight and staring straight ahead, her hands clenched around the invitation.

Around her, members of the NAAF moved, trying to clean up the remains of the dance. The rest of the Howling Commandos sat by the bar, even though last orders had been rung an hour ago. Falsworth alone didn’t look surprised to see Howard, but as Howard expected he was the one who sent for him, he ignored him.

Slowly, he made his way over to Peggy, moving carefully like with an injured animal.

“Peggy” he said, softly.

She turned slightly, a forced smile on her lips.

“Steve’s late.” She whispered. Stark sighed.

“Peggy. He’s not coming.”

She shook her head, desperately, tears bubbling at the edge of her eyes.

“No, he’d be here, he promised”

“Peggy!” He reached over, grabbing her arm, as she collapsed against him, sobbing in to his shirt. Vaguely he could make out words like “Miss him…hurts so much.”

He didn’t try to tell her he knew, that would have been patronising and patently untrue. Instead, he held her, rocking gently from side to side as she sobbed.

It wasn’t the worst dance he’d ever being to.

*/*/*//**/*/*/*/*/*/

“To be perfectly honest, Agent Carter, I’d called you because I’ve run out of ideas.” Thomas Wayne looks pale and unhealthy. It’s a look she’s starting to recognise as a soldier-scientist look of too much work, and too little sleep or sun.

The end of the war may be in sight, but there’s still so much to do.

Too much, some would say.

“I’ve known Howard since we were kids. He’s always been…driven, but I’ve never seen him like this.” Wayne runs his hands through black hair, ruffling it. “Basically he won’t eat, won’t sleep, and won’t stop. If he keeps on like this he’ll either kill someone else or himself.”

There’s a serious, earnest quality to this young man, which she likes. She can see how he could be Howard’s friend, in the same way Steve was.

Men like Howard need looking after, but in a different way to the rest of the world.

She agrees easily to follow him. They make their way through concrete corridors, ducking occasionally to avoid low hanging pipes.

The silence is erry, only the hum of the ventilation system to break it. They pass through a wall nearly 10 feet thick and she can’t help herself commenting.

“Looks like you could survive a V2 direct hit here.”

Thomas pauses, turning towards her, his face looking haggard. “We need it to survive something significantly more than that.” He paused, looking at her. “Howard said…where he was working last, where you two met, you were trying to make gods out of men?”

She paused, biting her lip. Steve was a wonderful man, but she’d never have called him a god, that seemed insulting somehow. “Just trying to help men be all that they could be.”

Thomas didn’t seem to hear her. “Well here we’re trying to harvest the energy of the gods. It will win us the war, but” He shook his head. “If we’d all known when we started, what we know now, I doubt any of us would have agreed.”

He pushed open the door.

Howard was standing by a blackboard, chalk streaked through his hair. He was muttering to himself, looking thin and worn. She approached him slowly.

“Howard.”

He didn’t reply, the chalk moving across the board. Closer now, she could hear what he was muttering.

“There must be a way, there has to be a way.”

“Howard.” She put her hand in the path of the chalk and he stopped for the first time, blinking at her like he didn’t recognise her. “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

He blinked again and shook his head. “No thank you.” It was polite, too polite for Howard Stark. He stepped around and continued moving along the board muttering. “If x=7000- no, there has to be some way for them to survive_”

“Howard.” She forced herself between him and board. “It was Steve’s birthday, yesterday.” She paused, half fighting the tears welling up in her eyes. “Please come and help me remember him.”

Howard blinked at her. “That’s what I’m doing. Going to stop them from dying.” She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but she can see something in Wayne’s face that tells us this is ugly.

Howard looked at her, something dark haunting his face. “My father manufactured gases in the first world war. Chlorine, Phosphine, Mustard. Must have cost hundreds of men their lives.” He shook his head. “I have to have a legacy that more than death and destruction, Peggy. I have to.”

“Steve is a part of your legacy.”

Howard snorted. “Will anyone beside us even remember?” He shook his head. “Peggy, if we succeed here, we’re not talking hundreds. We’re not even talking thousands. We’re talking Millions.”

She pauses, looking at the maths, trying to see how that can translate into anything with that power.

“And how many will you save?”

He blinks at her, confused. Thomas reaches out and slowly guides Howard out of the room.

Peggy Carter looks at the designs scattered on the table, and feels a chill fill her that she can’t understand.

/**/*/*/*/*/*//**/*/*/*/*/

The bride looks radiant.

Even if it is a cliché, it’s true. Maria Carbonell, Maria Stark now, looks beautiful in a dress of pure white (though if Howard is to be believed, she doesn’t have the right to wear that anymore) and a veil of Italian lace.

Peggy sipped her champagne and decided that she like Maria. She’s as quick witted and as intelligent as Howard, but there’s something softer, calmer in Maria.

She glances across at Howard, shaking hands with some friend of his father. He looks old, much older than he should. She wonders if she’s the only one, but then she see Maria’s eyes rest on her new husband when she think he isn’t looking, and understands. Maria sees it too, and she wants to fix it.

Carefully, Peggy threaded her way through the crowd. She touched Howard’s shoulder.

“Right Partner?” she asked, quietly. He nodded. There was no pause, no hesitation. Whatever else was going on, Howard Stark genuinely believed he had found the right partner for him.

“Then you’d better ask your wife to dance.”

And if her vision was blurred and there was a lump in her throat as she watched Howard Stark escort his wife on to the dance floor, well everyone cries at weddings.


End file.
